Only the Strong Survive
by RavenTears
Summary: A possessed urn has traveled across China and has finally arrived in Japan. . . . And it's looking for someone. . . .
1. Prologue

Only the Strong Survive

By RavenTears

Prologue

The middle-aged peddler drew on his pipe while the small flock of girls giggled over the jewelry spread out on the table. They fawned over necklaces of paste and gold plate and crowed over earrings of semiprecious stones set in low-grade silver. 

"Oh, I just _have _to show my mother these!" one of the girls chirruped. "Can you hold them for me until tomorrow?" This was directed at the peddler, and the small Chinaman removed his pipe from his lips and shook his head.

"Sorry, my dear, but tomorrow I will be in Japan." The girls pouted and prodded him for a few more minutes, but eventually went back to their fawning. The peddler knew that these would be easy sales.

Even now, a small voice in the back of his head urged him to take out the urn from his bag and sell it to one of the glib filles, but the peddler suppressed that thought, knowing such an attempt would be futile, no matter how gullible the customer. He glanced down under the table at his overstuffed bag, sighing at the thought of what was contained there. Over the years, he had come to lose hope that he would ever find the person to whom he must sell it, and never even bothered to set it out anymore.

He had bought the piece of glazed stoneware off a temple monk many years ago in the heart of China, without even knowing himself why he wanted it, being a jeweler by trade. Soon after, though, he had come to realize its strange power of influence.

He had been much younger then, and had not yet perfected his art of chicanery, and as such was in a rather sorry financial state. He would have been delighted to sell the urn for a decent sum, whether it equaled its actual worth or not, but somehow whenever a patron took an interest in the urn, he would say "That's not for sale," or "You can't afford that," before he even got the chance to smile at his good fortune.

In time, he had figured out the urn's mind-controlling ability and of course panicked. He ran through towns trying to get rid of the demon pottery, but no matter what he did, it always ended up back in his travel bag before long. First off, no one would buy anything from a person they perceived to be a raving lunatic, and secondly, he could never have mustered the force of will to abandon the urn. He always went back for it before he got too far away.

Once he had come to accept the will of the urn, things had gotten much easier for him. He had come to realize that whatever was possessing the urn was waiting for a certain person to which it would be sold, and that gave the peddler hope that he would be rid of the thing eventually. In the sixteen years since he had acquired the urn, however, he had traversed the Chinese mainland many times over, and had yet to find whatever the urn was seeking out through himself.

He took another drag from his pipe and exhaled slowly, ignoring the squeals from the gaggle that still hovered over his table. Maybe a few years in Japan would lead him to the urn's rightful owner.


	2. Chapter One

Only the Strong Survive

By RavenTears

Chapter One

A thin ribbon of blue-grey smoke twined through the air, like a rivulet of water slithering across the smooth surface of the atmosphere. The ribbon broke and diffused as a wizened old man took a drag from the wood-and-brass pipe, savoring the bitter taste as the thick fumes washed over his tongue and coated the inside of his mouth like a viscid, aeriform elixir. The old man puckered his creased mouth and exhaled the smoke into a small grey cloud that hovered in front of his face before rising and dissipating as well.

The late afternoon sun kept him comfortably warm as he lounged on the roof, nursing his pipe to the soothing sounds of domestic life going through its paces beneath him. Kasumi was humming a ditty to herself while taking laundry off the line, Soun and Genma were playing some parlor game and the intermittent clicks of the tiles on the board drifted up to the roof and his ears, while the constant buzz of Tokyo in the distance seemed more muted today than other days. Happosai sighed in contentment.

The peace of the afternoon was soon shattered, however, by the shouts that commonly accompanied Ranma and Akane's arrival home from school.

"Jerk!"

"Tomboy!"

"Pervert!"

"Uncute!"

Akane turned on him then, blocking the door to the house, ready to let him have it. She swung her bookbag at him, which he dodged easily.

"Ha! You're gonna hafta do better than that!" he jibed.

"Ranma. . . !" she growled dangerously. With a screech, she flung her bookbag at him with all her might, but Ranma simply plucked the bag out of the air and smugly mocked her.

"Ha!" he shouted, only to be cut off when her trigonometry book successfully connected with his face. "Ow . . ." he whimpered, rubbing his cheek.

"Hmph!" Akane turned her nose up at him and went into the house. Ranma was about to follow with a few monosyllabic comments of his own, but his attention was wrested by the one voice that no human alive could deny.

"Ranma-kun?" came the dainty alto, and all Ranma's anger was forgotten at her pleasant distraction.

"Yeah, Kasumi?" Ranma shoved his hands in his pockets and walked across the yard to the eldest Tendou daughter. Kasumi shifted the laundry basket to her other hip and smiled at Ranma.

"Would you do me a favor and buy some more sake vinegar before dinner?"

"Sure thing," he responded with a shrug, turning and walking back out of the yard. Kasumi turned into the house and called out to Akane when Ranma had left, telling her to calm down and assuring her that whatever Ranma had done couldn't really have been all _that _bad.

"Fine jewelry for sale! Gold! Silver! Low prices!"

Ranma lowered the shopping bag from its position slung over one shoulder and leaned down to inspect the wares the Chinese peddler had spread out on his table. Some of the pieces looked very nice, despite holding "stones" of colored glass, where as most of the gaudier (and in Ranma's opinion, uglier) pieces were made of real, albeit semiprecious stones.

Ranma's eyebrow twitched at the high-pitched squeal of the cluster of girls standing beside him as they tried on rings and necklaces.

He wasn't quite sure why, but a little voice in the back of his head was telling him that he ought to buy Akane's birthday present now, while he had cash. The voice made sense, of course – after all, buying it now would mean he wouldn't have to run out at the last minute or owe Nabiki any money. But it still felt like an odd compulsion – after all, forethought had never been _any _Saotome's strong suit.

The girls giggled loudly and shook Ranma's train of thought. Suddenly, he was very glad Akane was the tomboy she was and didn't giggle and squeal like the girls next to him.

Ranma gave the table another once-over and finally spotted something worth enduring the tittering bevy that crowded him. He reached across the table and picked up a pair of silver earrings with dark blue, dangling stones. He looked at the price tag and gulped. Yep, they were definitely real stones; what stones they were, he had no idea, but they must be fairly valuable.

Ranma glanced up and saw the peddler watching him intently, a vapid smile plastered on his face, and suddenly felt uneasy. The guy probably knew he didn't have that much money and was watching him in case he tried to steal the earrings.

"You like earrings, Sir?" He asked in broken Japanese. "Shopping for girlfriend, Sir?"

"Y-yeah," Ranma stammered, unsure of how to respond. "For my fiancée," he continued, surprising himself; he had said the "f" word without a stutter or pause, referring to Akane solely. And he had done it without thinking.

"Oh! Lucky bride!" the peddler exclaimed. "Here! I cut you deal! You get earrings on soon-to-be-married discount of forty percent!"

Now Ranma was really surprised. He had never been very good at math, but even with his limited ability he knew that discount would actually put the earrings in his price range. He looked at he jewelry he held in his hand. They really _would _look nice on Akane. . . .

"Ok," he said. "I'll take 'em."

"Very good!" the Chinaman exclaimed, clapping his hands together. "That make you Japanese customer number one thousand! You get pretty vase as free gift!"

Before Ranma could protest, the peddler had whipped out a small, lidded vase with Chinese ideograms written down the sides and was shoving it into his hands. He was smiling absurdly now, showing every oversized, crooked, yellow tooth in his mouth. Something about the desperate glee on the man's face made Ranma's skin crawl, but before he could turn the man down, he found himself accepting the vase.

"Cool. Lucky me."

"Gee! Look at time! Must start on road to Kyoto before is too dark!"

"Huh?" While Ranma and the rest of the crowd looked on with wide eyes, the peddler quickly packed up all of the jewelry into his bag, his hands a flurry of motion and the epitome haste.

"Hey! What about . . ." Ranma started, but the Chinaman had already taken off, abandoning the bare table in the middle of the shopping center and leaving a trail of dust as he ran. ". . . Your money. . . ?"

The crowd soon dispersed, accustomed to such strange happenings as residents of Nerima, and Ranma found himself standing in the middle of the plaza with a beautiful pair of earrings in one hand and a strange vase in the other, staring off at the road in the distance.

First, Ranma looked down at the earrings, sparkling in the afternoon sun and felt kind of proud. Then he looked at the vase and a shudder ran up his spine. _Then_ he remembered the money still safely in his pocket, unspent, and felt proud again.

Then again, the peddler running off like that without his money was probably a bad sign. . . .


	3. Chapter Two

Only the Strong Survive

By RavenTears

Chapter Two

"Thank you Ran– Oh my!" Kasumi stopped herself as she reached out to take the bag containing the vinegar from Ranma, seeing the other burdens in his arms. Ranma had just entered the house and had not had the chance to put away his other . . . purchases . . . before Kasumi came out of the kitchen smiling sunnily as she usually did. "What is all this?"

"Th-there was a peddler at the market," Ranma started to explain. "I thought Mom might like the vase. . . ."

"Oh, how _manly _of you to think of your mother!" Ranma sighed at the compliment. Kasumi always knew the exact right thing to say. "And those earrings! They're beautiful! For Akane?"

"Y-yeah," Ranma answered, feeling himself start to blush.

"That reminds me, Ranma-kun," Kasumi began, taking the plastic bag with the vinegar from him. "Akane has something she wants to say to you. She's up in her room doing her homework, so why don't you go on up and talk with her?"

"A'course. Whatever you say, Kasumi."

"Would you like me to wrap that vase up for your mother?" she asked reaching toward it. Ranma found himself acting without a thought, jerking the vase out of her reach.

"No!" Ranma said a little louder than he intended, flustering Kasumi. Ranma immediately felt guilty. "I mean, I want to wrap it myself."

Kasumi smiled again. "Oh yes, of course you would! You're such a sweet boy, Ranma-kun." Still smiling, Kasumi turned and headed back to the kitchen to start preparing dinner.

_If the Tendous had stopped after Kasumi, and she was your fiancée, would she still call you "boy?'_"Ranma wondered to himself. He shook off the unanswered question and mounted the stairs, headed for his room.

XXXXXXX

Ranma watched through Akane's ajar door as she sat at her desk, bent over her homework motionlessly, apparently hung up on a question. He wasn't sure how long he stood there, watching her ribs expand and contract with her breathing, and her pencil hover a hair's-breadth above the paper. She sporadically rolled the writing utensil between her slender digits as the answer continued to elude her, and Ranma found himself entranced by the simple motion of passing it between her fingers and tapping it against her thumb.

"Ranma?" He jumped, his eyes quickly darting up from her pencil to her face, finding her gaze resting on him. How long had he been standing there? How long had she known he was there? He forgot to panic as his vision settled on her dark eyes, which always made him melt inside. This time was no exception.

He felt the now-familiar warmth spread through his chest before he tore his eyes away and stared at a spot on the wall. "Kasumi said you wanted to talk to me?"

"Uh, yeah," she began, and Ranma heard the desk chair squeak as she stood. "Ranma, I — uh, that is . . . ." Akane trailed off and Ranma quirked an eyebrow, turning to face her once again. She had her hands folded behind her back and her head bowed as she stared at the floor. "I . . . I'm . . ." she took a deep breath and looked up to meet his gaze, "I'm sorry for flying off the handle, OK?"

Ranma stared at her blankly, having forgotten the incident already. Akane, of course, took this the wrong way.

"I said I'm sorry, OK?!" she growled. "What more do you want?!"

"Huh?"

"Argh! You're such a JERK!"

"What are ya yellin' at _me_ for?!" Ranma yelled back, retaliatory instincts taking over. "I ain't done nothin'!"

"Ranma! Akane!" Both turned, surprised out of their fight. Kasumi stood in the doorway, clean towels stacked neatly in her arms and her trademark smile AWOL. Ranma gulped audibly. "You both need to stop fighting! Ranma, Akane was trying to apologize for not listening to your side of the story this afternoon when Happosai tricked you into going into the girls' locker room. Akane, Ranma probably just forgot about your fight since I distracted him when I sent him to the market.

"So stop fighting over nothing," she said with a sigh, a little bit of her smile returning. "You both need to work on your communication skills." She shook her head empathetically and continued down the hall.

Ranma and Akane stared at the place where Kasumi had stood for several moments, then slowly turned to face each other.

"Is that true? Is that what you were apologizing about?"

Akane blushed slightly. "Y-yeah. What about you? Did you really just forget?"

"Uh-huh."

"Oh."

An awkward silence fell on the pair while they stared at their respective shoes for a while, both a little embarrassed. Akane was the first to break the moment, turning away and sitting back in her chair. Ranma followed, taking the chair he usually used during tutoring sessions and sitting in it backwards. Akane took up her pencil again and Ranma glanced over at her paper. She only had her name written at the top of the page.

"So why d'ya think Kasumi's playin' aribiter all of a sudden?"

It was Akane's turn to quirk her eyebrow. "Do you mean 'arbiter'?" she scoffed. "Since when do you use words like 'arbiter'?"

Ranma scowled. "Whatever. Answer the question."

"Well our parents _did _just try to marry us last week. To each other. Or have you forgotten _that_, too?"

"No," he defended, annoyed. "But sometimes I wish I had," Ranma admitted, shuddering internally at the memory of the fiasco.

She turned on him. "You better not let me catch you talking about our _real _wedding like that, or you'll wish you'd never been _born_."

"Woah! Breathe, Akane! Breathe!"

"Oh, ha-ha. Very funny." Akane rolled her eyes and Ranma chuckled. "Anyway, it must have just hit her that we're _gonna _get married, probably sooner than later, and she wants to help us stop fighting. I mean, when you're married, it's not like you can break up every other week when you get pissed off."

"Which is kinda what we do."

"Yeah."

"N-not that we're really a couple," Ranma added, suddenly nervous at the line of conversation.

"Of course not," Akane assured matter-of-factly. "It's just an arranged marriage."

"Yup. That's it. Nothing we can do about it."

"No point in fighting it."

"Nope, none at . . ." Ranma started to trail off, wondering if he was unwittingly agreeing to marriage, ". . . all." Akane broke his tension, however, as she began to laugh.

XXXXXXX

Ranma sat cross-legged on his futon and stared at the vase, set unobtrusively on the floor in front of him. He had to hide it somewhere – somewhere safe. He scanned his Spartan boudoir, eyes coming to rest on the wardrobe set against the far wall. For a moment, he considered stashing the vase there, but then recalled the incident with his father's funerary fish and ruled out the closet as a possible hiding place.

His gaze continued to drift, settling on a few other places (buried in his laundry, the vase was sure to be discovered by his mom or Kasumi, but rolled up in his futon would only work while he wasn't using it) and eventually he came to a conclusion. He really didn't have much in the way of material possessions.

After several more minutes of deliberation, Ranma finally decided on the crawlspace under the house. He didn't particularly like the idea of putting it somewhere he couldn't keep an eye on it, but it seemed the only option.

Resolute, Ranma tucked the urn under one arm and hopped out the second-story window.

And right on top of a snooping Shampoo in cat-form.


End file.
